none of us
without
us all
everyone’s story
under the boot
on the edge of town
at the end of the line
behind closed doors
in cattle cars
hidden in alleyways
cast into the wilderness
and shallow graves
underground passages
black site gulags
penal colonies
olvidadxs
desaparacidxs
perdidxs
erasing us
erases you
we are not
the ones who
cannot count

But when the local Charlottesville Reform Synagogue is threatened with being burned to the ground and is encircled with white supremacist KKK, Nazis with assault weapons, chanting white supremacist slogans, the cops are no where to be found.

“Antisemitism never went away and the repeated refrain of “this is 2017 in America” ignores the warnings and outcry of Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, Jewish Voice for Peace, the new Jim Crow, the New Slavery, the growing prison industrial complex, No Ban No Wall, mass deportations, immigrant detention centers and the criminalization of entire communities. This is not the aberration. This should come as no surprise. In the wake of the exposure of police brutality and police killings many communities have had to develop civil defense. The Jewish community is no different. The other side of “don’t call the cops” is that when you do call them, if they don’t do any harm, they often don’t show up, they don’t do anything to help. The historic complicity of the police with the KKK is well documented.

Protect yourself. Reach out to the larger community. Join in solidarity against oppression in all forms.”

Open Hillel is promoting the film “70 Years Across the Sea: American Jews and 21st Century Zionism”, about the divide in the Jewish community over models of zionism and the current State of Israel.

But the film thesis is very problematic, ignoring the deeper issues of power, class and imperialism, and centering the discussion on Jews and not Palestinians.

Gratefully the film (trailer) didn’t repeat the tired old argument that this is a generational divide, which further obscures the power basis of Israeli hegemony. The thesis of this film, though, at least according to the trailer, is very dangerous, repeats stereotypes of Jewish power, obscures the power of U.S. empire and its appropriation of Jewish suffering and the Jewish narrative.

It repeats the false assertion and stereotype of diaspora Jews as weak and passive, and Israelis as strong and active. The resistance to the Nazis, to the pogroms, to injustice in general is a disapora narrative that is obscured by the zionist narrative. We cannot fight for a free Palestine, and justice for Jews in the diaspora if we perpetuate these harmful stereotypes that locates Jewish strength in occupation , assimilation and as agents (or worse, as the controlling operatives ) of U.S. empire and locates Jewish weakness in ethnic identity and resistance/passivity in the diaspora.

The Israeli occupation isn’t a liability, it’s genocide, and it didn’t start in 67, it started in 48. Calling it a liability assumes that there is a just zionist solution, and centers the occupation of Palestine, around a zionist and imperialist narrative and seeks a compromise with a fair and just society that grants equal civil and human rights to all and not within a neoliberal or neoconservative debt dependency structure of the U.S.

The “power” of UhMurikan Jews is a narrative of upper middle class and wealthy Jews, and white supremacist ideology, and doesn’t apply to all Jews in the U.S.. That power to the extent that it exists, is predicated on support for Israel, and support for U.S. empire in general. It’s also a delusion, a fragile membership of court Jews and house Jews.

The real power of U.S. support for Israel comes from the Christian zionists, who number in the tens of millions, which explains why organizations like the ADL and the Simon Weisenthal Center, and Stand With Us can ignore the Jewish community and support a zionism to the right of most Jews, including most zionist Jews.

Cafe Intifada has been covering the issue of anti-Jewish racism for some time, and the growing normalization of white supremacist ideology of Counterpunch Magazine, Paul Craig Roberts, Alex Jones, Gilad Atzmon, Ron Paul, Greta Berlin, Alison Weir, David Icke David Duke, If Americans Knew, etc. It is our belief that the now visible normalization of extreme right wing, ideological white supremacy, had its initial inroads in the left in the form of these popular white supremacists.

There have been threats to Jewish organizations, desecrations of cemeteries and synagogues forever, but people are both more aware of these terrorist acts, and they are also increasing in frequency and intensity.

The most terrifying are reports of multiple bomb threats of Jewish community centers, which for the most part, are places for families to gather, leave children for day care, senior citizen activities, hold cultural and creative classes. JCCs are not a location of political action or religion, for the most part. These treats are a treat against Jewish children. Targeting children is the work of those who see the entire population as a threat. It is the work of those who advocate if not carry out genocide.

The Anne Frank Center For Mutual Respect in New York has done wonderful work on twitter and facebook making known these outrageous threats, and making important connections between racism in general and antisemitism specifically.

Karen Rago, on facebook has provided links to these events and her own commentary:

“I saw a friend today who’s not on Facebook. She had NO IDEA about all the bomb threats, the synagogue classroom being shot, the man being arrested with weapons for planning a massacre at a synagogue, or the Jewish cemeteries being desecrated.“Which I think is pretty weird considering Jews control the media.”

“Justification I saw as to why they need to catch the person/people responsible for the Jewish bomb threats: “Not just Jewish people go to Jewish Community Centers.”I’m so fucking done.”

“Two more bomb threats this morning at a Jewish senior center and a Jewish Community Center. They’ve escalated to daily. Still not making mainstream news. CNN has a front page story about Emma Watson blushing, though.”

Comments on an article, because there’s so much more to say on the topic.
By Emma Rosenthal

When an article was recently posted on Christian “Privilege” and then circulated on Facebook, I added a few of my own observations and experiences. I kept coming back to the article to as more and more examples of Christian entitlement came to me. So I decided it was time to put them into my own list.

This sort of bigotry is very much rooted in white supremacy, manifest destiny, imperialism and conquest. This isn’t really about “faith”, as the article that inspired my list, suggests. It’s very much about culture and domination. Christian privilege extends to secular life and nonreligious practices. The article itself embodies Christian privilege, in asserting that non-Christians’ faith is the subject of marginalization. One often does not escape these marginalizing attitudes simply by converting. Often persecution is cross generational, ethnic and racialized.

1. Tests, classes, schedules, the beginning of the school year, programs will be considered in scheduling in academic calendars so as not to conflict with your holidays and important events.

2. Negative opinions of your faith aren’t translated into actual policy or institutions that limit you or your access to opportunities and services.

3. The cultural aspects of your faith, or the faith aspects of your culture won’t be minimized, conflated or dismissed.

4. You won’t be racialized and subjected to systemic racism (including government harassment, profiling, incarceration, genocide) because of your faith or lineage.

5. You won’t be assumed to be a 5th column, loyal to an outside entity.

6. Your religious identity or affiliation will be seen as an indication of virtue and not as dangerous, mysterious, magical, exotic, heretical, dishonest or untrustworthy.

7. If you are a teacher, you won’t be told “i don’t know how you can teach my child.” (i actually have had children pulled out of my class by their parents for this reason, and i’ve heard other Jewish teachers say the same thing. )

8. Your children won’t constantly be told by classmates that they are damned for all eternity and will burn in hell.

9. Because of your faith, you won’t be assumed to be good at some professions, dominating some and untrustworthy in others.

1o. (Despite evidence to the contrary, when it comes to global conquest) you won’t be accused of attempting world domination and imposing your values, beliefs and religious mandates on the whole world.

11 People who carry out violent acts, won’t be assumed to be from your religious group, even when they are, and when they are, even when religion is the motivator for the act, it won’t be held against you and your entire group.

12. You can use the word crusade like it is a good thing, a generic word simply in reference to an impassioned campaign, as if it has no historic reference to brutality, murder, conquest or genocide.

13. No one asks you where your horns and tail are. (yes. that.)

14. You won’t be seen as a foreigner or outsider, no matter how many generations your family has lived in a particular geography.

AIM_poster background, additional graphics by Jenny Grossbard based on the speech by Moonanum James

This page is being updated with new links, throughout the day, with the newest posts at the top of the page.

it is impossible to separate this gluttony with the symbolism, its origins, the narrative taught in classrooms throughout the country, and what this holiday means to native american people. it’s sort of like leonard cohen saying he can play… tel aviv as long as he donates the money to an israeli “human rights” organization and mentions the palestinians. nice of HIM to decide for palestinian civil society what’s the “right” way to support justice! this holiday is rooted in the amerikan settler colonial narrative (i watched from my porch, mexican and central american kids, walking home from school with “indian” headresses on, made of paper;) when we confront empire, power, racism and genocide we can’t do it separate from that history and its impositions and the impact its “celebration” has on the people on whose bones we chew. -emma rosenthal- cafe intifadaA few Links on Thanksgiving: The Amerikan Settler Colonial Narrative

“After a colonial militia had returned from murdering the men, women, and children of an Indian village, the governor proclaimed a holiday and feast to give thanks for the massacre. He encouraged other colonies to do likewise—in other words, every autumn the crops are in, go kill Indians and celebrate your murders with a feast.”

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It is easier to teach a fairy tale than to teach that the first thanksgiving was a celebration of the massacre of defenseless Indian people.” – Leonard Peltier.

“So let us be very careful when we think we know our ancestors and our history. Let us not be captivated by romanticism or the movie-making of Hollywood or particularly the patriarchal conquerors who would re-write history for the sake of their legacies as they white-wash their misdeeds, greed and exploitation.”

A beautiful old Floyd Westerman song, sung here by Daniel Patrick Welch. Look him up–his album for which this is the title track is still available somewhere. Incredibly moving lyrics, very apropos for thanksgiving, modern US history, and any hope for a just world. ..

From Mumia Abu Jamal: Most Americans do not know and do not care to know anything about Native history or culture. What is passed off as Native comes from cartoons, a few racist as hell movies, and totally fictional public school education myths.

I have stopped hating Thanksgiving and learned to be afraid of the holiday. Over the past few years a growing number of white people have joined the longstanding indigenous people’s critique of the holocaust denial that is at the heart of the Thanksgiving

“Deconstructing the Myths of “The First Thanksgiving”by Judy Dow (Abenaki) and Beverly SlapinRevised 06/12/06 What is it about the story of “The First Thanksgiving” that makes it essential to be taught in virtually every grade from preschool through high school? What is it about the story that is s…

How did the Pilgrims celebrate the first Thanksgiving? According to these adorable young history buffs, with blankets covered in smallpox.

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‎”George Washington orders, 1779: “lay waste all the Iroquois settlements…not be merely overrun but destroyed…You will not listen to any overture of peace before the total ruin of their settlements…Our FUTURE SECURITY will be in THEIR INABILITY TO INJURE US…& in the TERROR with which the severity of the chastise…ment they receive will inspire them.” “Preventive” war using terror!!”

The injustices that Native Americans face today are varied. Some, including poverty, health care, education, and violence against women, affect many others in United States, but are exacerbated in Native Americans’ case because of jurisdictional issues and historic marginalization. Other justice issues, including tribal sovereignty, and certain immigration issues and violations of religious liberty, are unique to the Native American experience. Source: http://www.uua.org/socialjustice/issues/economicracial/nativeamerican/index.shtml